


Becoming Someone New

by nagi_schwarz



Series: Foxtrot [3]
Category: Stargate Atlantis, The Dollhouse - Fandom
Genre: Dollhouse-level non-con, Other, not actually RPF
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-12
Updated: 2016-03-12
Packaged: 2018-05-26 07:09:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 964
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6228712
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nagi_schwarz/pseuds/nagi_schwarz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the comment_fic prompt: any, any, becoming someone new. How Joe became Foxtrot became John. From pre-series to Season 1 of SGA.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Becoming Someone New

The first time Joe became someone else, it wasn't a true transformation. He'd stood in front of the closet mirror in John Sheppard's dorm room wearing some of John's clothes (much nicer than he could ever afford, much better put together than he could ever figure out). John slung an arm around his shoulders and grinned at him.  
  
"See? We're practically twins. Now, if any of the girls at this party ask, you're my cousin, and you're a business major. You can fake business talk, right? With all those math classes you take."  
  
"Sure," Joe had said. "I can do that." And he did it - badly. But the less pretty girls who were hangers-on of the prettiest girls at John's parties giggled at him and plied him with drinks, and after he recovered from the roaring hangover the next day, he'd learned a few things. In a few short months he'd perfected his wing-man position as John's shyer, sweeter, more innocent cousin, and the bold girls, the aggressive girls, they lapped it up, liked to drag him into upstairs rooms and teach him new things.  
  
Visiting John's family on holiday breaks taught him even more, how to navigate strained conversations in a house where going to Stanford instead of Harvard was a massive rebellion, how to ingratiate himself with John's father and brother without alienating John.  
  
And then it all went wrong, the wrong party, the wrong place, the wrong time, the wrong drink, and John was dead, and there were police and detectives and people in dark suits and when Joe was finally free of the chaos, he was in a little locked room, too high-tech to be a regular police interrogation room. The woman opposite him, Adelle DeWitt, knew everything about him, from his abusive father to his parents' messy divorce to his steady decline inward, hiding behind a wall of numbers that was too emotionally fraught to amount to true genius. John Sheppard was important, part of an international business empire, a much-needed spare in a world that was perilous for the true heir. Joe looked so much like John; everybody said it. People who'd never met John before wouldn't know the difference. It was his fault John was dead. He owed the Sheppard family. And there was a way for him to help them. Just be John every now and again. They'd pay him ridiculous amounts of money to keep the secret.  
  
Joe stared at the number she presented, and he didn't look to closely at the fine print. He remembered the way Patrick Sheppard's eyes had shone when Joe described a math theorem he was working on in his spare time. He remembered the way Dave had been protective when he'd found out John liked using Joe as a wing-man. And he signed.  
  
The first time Joe became another person, truly became another person, he didn't remember, not for decades. But he sat down in a chair, and he woke up as a blank slate, a human doll, named Foxtrot.  
  
The second time Joe became another person, he became John Sheppard, everything the young man had been before he died, with two tiny modifications - Joe had kept his math skills, and he'd acquired a handler named Nancy (Nancy wasn't her real name, and she was under orders to one day become his wife).

After that, Joe ceased to exist and it was Foxtrot who became new people over and over again. He'd lay down in the chair, and when he sat back up, he was someone's fantasy, the mild-mannered English teacher at an elite private school who was secretly engaged in a torrid affair with one of his student's mothers. Or a tool for a specialized task, like hostage negotiation, or an advanced physics researcher when the physicist the company wanted refused to work for them. Or just John Sheppard himself, willing to take an extra-marital roll in the hay to seal the deal (and if Patrick Sheppard knew how some of his toughest deals were being sealed, it explained a lot about his attitude toward his second son, even if he'd agreed to let the Dollhouse use Foxtrot when John wasn't needed for anything particularly pressing).  
  
John Sheppard became a whole new person when, in his sophomore year of college, he joined the ROTC (he was at a bad party last year, his old friends said, almost died, his skinny friend Joe had died, the party had scared him straight, kind of). He kept his wife, but when he was posted overseas he acquired a new handler, and the powers that be allowed his relationship with his wife to fracture so she could move on, be a handler for some other doll. (The military was displeased with having to covertly expend extra efforts to keep Patrick Sheppard's son alive; Patrick didn't like the peril his spare was in, but military service looked good if one wanted to go into politics, and besides, the clean energy research contract Sheppard Utilities had won with the Air Force meant having a son who was an Air Force officer was also helpful.)  
  
The first time John sat in the control chair in the city of Atlantis, he died. That was the end of John Sheppard as he had been since the day he'd been imprinted onto Foxtrot. The John Sheppard who rose up from the chair, weak-kneed and mumbling to Rodney about a headache, was the last of the identities permanently piled into the composite person known as Foxtrot (Thelan, while a nightmare, had only been temporary). He was the John Sheppard who loved Atlantis fiercely, who would do anything for her and the people he served with, and he was the John Sheppard who knew who and what he really was.


End file.
